Lost and Found
by hana-ginkawa
Summary: This is an old InuKag AU oneshot I wrote towards the beginning of this year when I decided to try and write again.


The stage was silent but for the sound of the concertgoers murmuring in the stands. Kagome kept her eyes forward, a pounding beginning in her chest as she saw motion towards the back. She felt herself holding her breath and she let it out slowly, gazing up at the dark maw of the stage. She softly gasped as a blue light misted the stage in color and the first chords of the opening song, "Tremble", began to whisper out through the speakers. The crowd grew even quieter to catch the tune and she heard the girl next to her humming along. She felt a smile grow up one side of her mouth. He really was popular. The whisper pounded into full-blown voice as the stage erupted in pyrotechnics and he appeared in the middle of the stage. His white hair assumed the color of the lights onstage and his eyes flashed gold in the light. He growled out the first line of the song, his deep voice thundering out across the fans. A shiver ran up her spine and she felt her heart leap into her throat. He was beautiful, all power and grace, roaming back and forth across the stage. His features expressing the seduction of the song as he sang it.

Her breath caught once more as his golden eyes found her in the crowd. She felt the chill and the goose bumps up her arms. This was Inuyasha? Oh my. She remembered him from high school and thought how much of a pain in the ass he was most of the time. After five years, she wondered if her memory was true. She thought to their group of friends and his stupid antics. Yep, the memories rang true as he dropped to his knees on the stage, his laced up shirt gaping, giving the fangirls a clear view of his well-muscled chest. He did that move often a time, air-guitaring to some unheard rock song going through his mind.

She thought back to graduation and the various paths that her group took. She, of course, went to college. Her mom was adamant about that. College, or move out. It helped that she wanted to continue school, so the perk was being able to go without having to worry about dorms and rent, or working full-time for that matter. It also was an easy choice seeing as how the nearby university was Tokyo U. Shippou followed her to college, majoring in the dramatic arts. Sango and Miroku married, as was predicted. They in fact married that next year. She remembered Inuyasha then as well, fiddling with the cummerbund on his tux before handing over the rings. She also remembered his joke of pretending to forget where the rings were. Poor Miroku, his face had turned a curious shade of green as Inuyasha searched his pockets repeatedly, a look of "What the fuck?" on his face. She had wanted to hit him then, Shippou did for her. Miroku and Sango had a child a year after the wedding. Inuyasha, of course, had no plans for the future except playing rock with his band. He became a bit of a rebel that year after graduation, only to disappear after the wedding. She frowned a bit in remembered sorrow. She had pushed that aside, hadn't she? Well, he had been trying to make it big it seems.

* * *

She stood to the side of the backstage door, two of the security guards having grabbed her in the masses leaving Tokyo Dome. She had figured he would ask for her since his eyes had locked onto her frequently during the concert, and if he hadn't, oh well, no loss on her part. A twinge of her heart said otherwise. She ignored it as she twiddled the strings of her Tokyo U hoodie as she waited. The guards had moved a way off from the door, eyes out towards the lines of cars on the roads surrounding the dome. A couple of limos were parked along the street right in front of the back door and she wondered which one was Inuyasha's. She rolled her eyes as an idle fantasy flashed past in her mind. HA! As if she would do that! Wait for him naked in the vehicle. It would be just her luck that it would be the wrong one! She snickered and pulled on one string gently.

Whatever she was expecting when he came out of the door wasn't at all what happened. She had expected the stereotypical rocker mentality, drunk and poor attempts at accosting her. Instead, a stolid, sober man came out and upon seeing her, smiled and spoke her name with such reverence.

"Kagome! I was surprised to see you!" He promptly walked over and enveloped her in a tight, affectionate embrace. "Took a break from school to rock out, eh?"

She frowned at his comment as he pulled away. "How did you know I was still in school?"

He looked chagrined as he answered, "I've kept in contact with Miroku. He keeps me up to speed. Hell, I didn't even know you listened to my stuff."

It was her turn for chagrin to cross her features, "Actually, I don't. I happened to see an ad for your concert while watching T.V. one night."

He chuckled and nodded his head. "Figures. You were always into the pop more than anything."

She shrugged, "Not all of us can be rock-star wannabes."

He smiled, flashing his white fangs. "Ain't it the truth."

"So how come Miroku rates your contact, but I'm left in the dark? I thought there were five of us in the group."

"Well, it's not like I talk to him all the time," he began to look uncomfortable with the direction of their conversation, as other band members and stage assistants filed out the door behind him.

"At least you talk to him though!" She snapped back, her anger taking him off guard, causing a few of those behind him to wince in sympathy.

A security guard chose that moment to interrupt, "Sir, I suggest you get in the vehicle. Front gate security reports a possible mob moving this way."

Inuyasha nodded in acknowledgement and looked at Kagome, gesturing to the car. She sighed heavily, a frown still creasing the skin between her eyebrows, then nodded and walked towards the sleek black limo. They climbed in, the silence between them huge. The car lurched into motion with the two of them continuing to not speak. And when Kagome doesn't speak, there isn't just a huge problem, it's worse.

"I would have called you eventually." His ears drooped to the side as he dropped his head to his chest.

"Well, you _were_ always the wanderer."

He looked up at her as she stared out the window. "It's not like any of us expected you to stick around. It would have been nice to hear from you though, even if it was only once in a great while."

He didn't need to see her face nor her eyes to read into the disappointed tone of her voice. The love that he felt for her defied all laws. She the graduate student, destined for medical school from early on. He the wild rebellious rock star that no one was sure they could quite trust. But his care for her had begun when the group first became. He had been in a fight and had been victorious, sending the loser running off crying to his mother. He was aching and sore, but didn't act like it at all. He had an image to uphold after all. It was then she came up to him, forced him to sit while she took care of his cuts and bruises. Her gentle touch soothed the pain and her reprimanding voice brought him back from the haze of battle he had been under. She looked at him with neither disgust nor fear while others had stood back. Even being hanyou didn't matter to her. He didn't know if she knew what that meant to him. He finally felt like he belonged somewhere and it was with her.

From that moment on he had dogged her footsteps. Annoying her, terrorizing her friends, all the while keeping an eye on her. It was soon after that Shippou joined. An orphaned kitsune kit from the grade below that everyone picked on for his small size. Kagome's kindness had reeled him in as well when she had stepped between him and a couple of the school bullies Inuyasha hadn't yet had to deal with. It was after that when he took the squirt into his makeshift family. He terrorized Shippou and the kit gave what he could back. But like Kagome, he kept an eye on him, sure to keep the other bullies away. Miroku joined soon after, once again by Kagome's kindness and desire to help people out. He had a warped sense of humor however and would try to win girls over by inquiring as to if they would bear his child. Kagome had to save him a few times from girls who took quite a bit of offense to this. However, he did give sage advice to whomever asked him. Sango transferred in during their sixth year, a daughter of a demon-hunter and she and Kagome became best friends, thus joining their circle of friends.

Inuyasha had stayed relatively out of trouble with Kagome and the others looking out for him. Although the occasional prank still won him detention. Over the years, he had come to trust and depend on them all. Before then, he had no one. He felt an affinity for Shippou in their mutual loss of their parents, found advice well given from Miroku, someone to cover his back in battle with Sango, and comfort from Kagome.

He had known from the start that he wanted to marry Kagome one day, but he also knew that he needed to be able to offer her more than the clothes on his back and his bad attitude. It was for her that he disappeared to seek his fortune. He would come back only when it had been found. Miroku had reluctantly agreed to keep him informed of her activities to make sure he still had his chance. And one afternoon, Sango had let slip a secret that Kagome had kept all these years. She had loved him from day one as well.

In his absence she had dated a few times. Not that he blamed her. She had kept her feelings to herself for so long and perhaps in order to try and forget him, she had sought someone else. However, since her third year of college, she had dropped all pretense of wanting to find someone and focused completely on her degree. Part of him had hoped that she couldn't find anyone like him to fill the void, but the other part laughed and said she probably just gave up. It didn't matter anymore. She was here and that was the important thing. He decided that it was now or never.

He looked at her face as she stared out the window and finally broke the silence. "I know. And I'm sorry. I just, well, I wanted to be able to give you something more than the clothes off my back when I saw you next."

Her head whipped around quick in the instant the words left his mouth. He met her eyes than turned away to the window of the limo on his side. "I was going to wait until my second album dropped in a month, just so I could prove to you I could offer you anything you wanted."

He then looked down at his clawed hands in the dark of the moving vehicle. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it would take this long."

They sat in silence again for a long time as he let her sort out what he had just said. He played with the rings on his fingers. Trying it on one and then another before finally leaving it in its original place.

In her mind, Kagome was reeling. He had done this for her? Asshole Inuyasha? Whom she had loved despite that fact? While it was true he had been a pain to know with his constant teasing and their never-ending arguments, she had seen another side to the Inuyasha that had been feared at school. There were small moments in the time they spent together that his true soul shone through. He had beaten up the bullies Shippou had trouble with, held her when she had lost her cat to a car. Had attacked said car so that it wouldn't ever move again. Stood beside her through any storm that billowed on her horizon and withheld judgment on any mistakes she had made. Although, she thought with a small smile, he would give her a hard time about it later. He would never let her mope around him because he would make some comment to make her angry enough to forget whatever it was she was likely to mope about. It was all those things and more. He had been her protector, her foundation. When he had left . . .

"When you left without a word, I almost quit school."

He turned to look at her and she met his gaze, "Miroku never told me that." In his voice there was a soft wondering tone to it.

She shrugged, "He never knew. Sango knew something of my, uh, feelings towards you and she was the only one to know this."

The pain began to resurface. Years of tamping down the pain in deference to her resolution to move on with her life caused it to flood the dam and the first tear trailed down her cheek. She let a short sarcastic laugh out before she continued.

"No one would have ever suspected that wild, rebellious Inuyasha had become the very earth I stood upon. The person that I had come to rely on the most."

Another tear rolled down the cheek lit by the moving lights outside the car, followed by still another on the opposite side. "When you left, it felt as if my world, the ground beneath my feet, had disintegrated."

His chest constricted. He wanted, no, needed to reach out to her, but he knew she had more to say. Kagome would always have more to say, an inward smile acknowledged.

"No one knew where you went, or wouldn't tell me if they did know. And I couldn't breath. If I couldn't find you, there would be no point to my life. No one to work so hard for, and no one to keep me going; I knew if you were there, you would keep pushing me."

Her voice was quavering now and the instinct to comfort her was begging to be put to use, but still, he held back. He was uncertain now. The sadness and the anger in her voice confused him. The thought that began to run through his mind was what if she hated him? After all this separation and hard work, only to find she didn't want . . .

"You stupid moron, I would have taken you with just the clothes on your back! We could have worked it out! All that would have mattered was that you were with me!"

She dropped her head into her hands and began to cry uncontrollably, the body doubled up in her grief. He gave in and pulled her close to him, rocking her back and forth, just as he had done years ago, while she sobbed all her heartache out. He shushed her softly and waited until she was hiccupping with the tail end of her crying. He kissed her forehead then, in the dark of the limo and whispered, "I was always with you."

Her crying began anew and she buried her head into his shoulder. This was four years worth of pain that was being released, and more years of denied emotion coming out, and he would let her. A sense of relief washed over him when her arms locked around his waist when this bout of crying slowly quit its hold on her. She brought her head up from his shoulder and mumbled, "I'm ruining your shirt."

He chuckled and felt her giggle in answer. "I think that it is a good sacrifice considering what I had been afraid of losing."

She sniffed loudly and quite indelicately before answering, "You were worried?"

She was so cute even when she's crying, he thought as he tightened his arms around her. "Of course. There is a thin line between love and hate. You could have just as easily begun to despise me."

She sighed. "There were times when I was sure I did. Sango would always listen to my tirade and calmly remind me that you never did anything without reason. It was she who convinced me to continue with school. She said it would at least take my mind off of you. And she was right. Although there were moments."

"I'm sure. You were never one to completely forget about anything, especially something like that," he chuckled.

When she pulled away from his embrace, he didn't expect it to be so she could pummel his chest with her fists.

"OW! What the hell . . .?"

She glared at him in answer, "Don't think you're going to get off easy, pal! I'm going to make you pay for making me worry!"

He stared into her flashing blue eyes and smiled, "I'm counting on it."

He saw the look of surprise on her face as she registered those words before he leaned down to capture her lips. She hesitated for a moment before responding and grabbed the back of his neck to bring her body closer to his. He lost himself in her sweet taste and the smell of her arousal. She found herself in the embrace of his arms and the seduction of his kiss.


End file.
